Boeing finds more defective fasteners on 737s

Thursday

Defective fasteners, which were reported two weeks ago on Boeing 737s, have also been found in its widebody jets, further delaying a return to full production, the company said Wednesday.

The fasteners, or nutplates, are used to attach wiring and other components to the inside of fuselages.

The defective steel parts lack an anticorrosive coating and are being replaced on 747s, 767s and 777s on the assembly and flight lines.

Boeing is trying to ramp up from an eight-week Machinists union strike that ended in early November, Boeing spokeswoman Beverly J. Holland said.

Customer reaction has been less focused on the additional delay than on "what are we doing to assure that this does not happen again," Holland said. "Nobody wants a plane to be delivered with noncomforming parts."

Boeing declined to disclose the cost of checking and replacing uncoated fasteners.

There is no immediate safety issue for the 476 planes now in use that also must eventually be checked, including 363 737s and 113 bigger planes, Holland said.

Scott Hamilton, an aviation consultant and managing director of Leeham Cos., estimated that it would take three to five days to check each undelivered 737 and less time to check the bigger planes.

Roughly a third of the fasteners used by Boeing supplier Spirit Aerosystems in Wichita, Kan., lack a cadmium coating that helps prevent corrosion on adjoining aluminum parts. Spirit, a former Boeing operation, builds the 737 fuselage and the nose and front fuselage of the bigger planes.

Company officials said earlier that one of Spirit's three nutplate suppliers delivered the defective fasteners.

Holland said it has been determined that the first defective nutplates went into fuselages in Wichita in August 2007 and that airplanes that included those fuselages were delivered starting the next month.

Kenneth Evans, a spokesman for Spirit, said the uncoated nutplates were first noticed in Wichita in late August.

Boeing was alerted at an unspecified date not long afterward, probably early in September, when the extent of the problem became more clear, Evans said.

Holland said Boeing knew from an early stage that widebody jets as well as 737s were affected but initially mentioned the problem only with the smaller planes because "that's where the major impact was."

Boeing delivered 15 planes -- 11 of them 737s -- between Sept. 6, the start of the strike, and Oct. 24, the last date for which the company has released information.

Holland said she was not able to determine on Wednesday when Boeing knew the full extent of the fastener problem.

Evans said all the uncoated fasteners had been returned to the supplier, which he and Holland would not identify. Spirit has an adequate supply of properly coated nutplates from other suppliers and is not getting more deliveries from that supplier, Evans said.

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